Taliban’s Mullah Omar operating from base in Pak: NY Times

He oversees his movement through a grand council of 10 members, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahed told the Times in a telephone interview.

Mullah Bradar, one of the Taliban’s most senior and ruthless commanders, who has been cited by human rights groups for committing massacres, serves as his first deputy.

He passes down Mullah Omar’s commands and makes all military decisions, including how foreign fighters are deployed, the paper said, citing Waheed Muzhta, a former Taliban Foreign Ministry official who lives in Kabul and follows the progress of the Taliban through his own research.

The Taliban even produce their own magazine, Al Somood, published online in Arabic, where details of their leadership structure can be found, he said.

Pakistani officials say ties between their powerful spy agency ISI and Taliban have been broken. But the Times claims there is no doubt that the Taliban continue to use Pakistan to train, recruit, regroup and re-supply their movement.

The advantage of that haven in Pakistan, even beyond the lawless tribal realms, has allowed the Taliban leadership to exercise uninterrupted control of its insurgency through the same clique of mullahs and military commanders who ran Afghanistan as a theocracy and harboured Osama bin Laden until they were driven from power in December 2001, the paper noted.

But while the Taliban may be united politically, the insurgency remains poorly coordinated at operational and strategic levels, Gen. David McKiernan, commander of the NATO force in Afghanistan, is quoted as saying by the Times.

Taliban forces cannot hold territory, and they cannot defeat NATO forces in a direct fight, other NATO officials say. They also note that scores of senior and midlevel Taliban commanders have been killed over the past year, weakening the insurgents, especially in the south.

But the objectives of the war have become increasingly uncertain in a conflict where Taliban leaders say they do not feel the need to control territory, at least for now, or to outfight the US and NATO forces to defeat them only to outlast them in a region that is in any case their home, the paper says.

“The Taliban are now mounting a hit-and-run war against their enemies,” said Mujahed, the spokesman. “It doesn’t need much money or weapons compared to what the foreign troops are spending.”

The Taliban’s tenacity, military officials and analysts were quoted as saying, reflects their success in maintaining a cohesive leadership since being driven from power, their ability to attract a continuous stream of recruits and their advantage in having a haven across the border in Pakistan.

While the Taliban enjoy such a sanctuary, they will be very hard to beat, military officials told the Times as the US officials stepped up pressure on Pakistan to take more action against the Taliban and other militants groups there.

Even so, Western officials were quoted as saying the Taliban have a steady stream of financing from Afghanistan’s opium trade, as well as from traders, mosques, jihad groups and sympathisers in the region, and Arab countries.